Field Dominance Anomaly with DNxHD codec recompress vs import

I am trying to combine some DNxHD 36 8 bit footage which I’ve run though Pavtube HD Video Converter on a PC into Final Cut Pro sequences which I have cut in Pro Res 422 and then re-compressed into the same codec through Media Manager on FCP 7.

The DNxHD 36 8 codec is not available ‘native’ in the recompression route through media manager but is selectable in the Quicktime video settings of the sequence settings window.

The clips I get from the internal compression setting on FCP using this saved sequence preset maintain Field dominance (Odd) whereas my DNxHD 36 8 clips from the PC are Field dominance (None) when I drag them across to fcp, despite my setting the field dominance on the sequence settings to field dominance (none).

I can’t combine these clips in the same sequence without rendering and for an 80-minute sequence this is totally impractical.

[Andrew Johnson]"The DNxHD 36 8 codec is not available ‘native’ in the recompression route through media manager"

Apple doesn't permit it. Period.

They also don't see DNxHD as a YCr'Cb' codec, but rather as an RGB codec.

[Andrew Johnson]"The clips I get from the internal compression setting on FCP using this saved sequence preset maintain Field dominance (Odd) whereas my DNxHD 36 8 clips from the PC are Field dominance (None) when I drag them across to fcp, despite my setting the field dominance on the sequence settings to field dominance (none)."

FCP isn't paying attention to the clips period.

[Andrew Johnson]"I can’t combine these clips in the same sequence without rendering and for an 80-minute sequence this is totally impractical"

Couple of thoughts. However you're getting the DNxHD files...could you get something else? Or transcode before using FCP7 (this is the most common workflow.)

Beyond that? Nothing good as a suggestion - only use a different NLE (Avid, Premiere Pro or FCPX.) None of the three need transcoding for playback.

Thanks for this response. I have tried multiple other formats that Pavtube HD Video Converter on the PC gives me as transcoding options and none of them behave in FCP as a true NLE codec should. Most of them are not editing codecs.

Basically, I’m trying to dodge proprietary .264 files from real security cameras into something I can edit in FCP on a found footage feature film.

The—immeasurably cumbersome—Mac workaround is to play them through the proprietary .264 player from the manufacturer of the cameras and Camtasia the full screen as a Pro Res 422 file, but this takes an absolute aeon, and introduces latency when other processes are going on in the operating system (literally) in the background.

I’ve gone too far down the road of the assembly cut of the feature (1 hr 20mins so far) to switch to AVID or Premiere now and I dearly want to set the separate PC I’ve just bought (i7, GTX 650 1GB GDDR5, 16GB RAM) to work on transcoding these .264 files while I get on with the rest of the edit.

The last resort option I can see is to convert the .264s into AVIs with AVI Generator 9.0 and then transcode them into DNxHD on Pavtube HD Video Converter but we’re going one generation down then, aren’t we, which is not desirable.

You can try as well to convert the camera files to AVI/Animation. Then the files could be rewrapped as QT/Animation. Rewrapping is fast and doesn't degrades the picture.
Other solution would be to export the movie as an stills sequence.
rafael

The only video converters I have found so far which will actually deal with the .264 files are Pavtube HD Video Converter and Cinec (which is an FFmpeg program) on the PC and nothing on the Mac will even play these .264s, nor convert the .avi files I get when I convert the .264s to .avi in AVI Generator on the PC. Compressor won’t even look at the .avi files I have obtained from AVI Generator on the PC which seems baffling to me, especially when I have installed everything to do with DivX and 3ivx onto the Mac running Compressor.

I think some of this incredible bottleneck could be due to the possibility that the .264s I have shot might be raw video streams rather than containerised clips.

The bonus with Cinec on the PC is that it theoretically spits out Pro Res 422 files straight from the .264s on the PC natively, which is exactly what I need, but the cinec.lib1.exe crashes whenever the converted file gets to about 9 gigs, whether I’m using one core or two and regardless of what drives I’m running it off.

I surmise this is because of the protection issues around the Apple codecs, or the streaming issue, or the bad coding of Cinec, but I’m about ready to hurl this godforsaken PC lemon into the street as I can’t get even one decent file from any of this mindless trial-and-error ludicrousness.

If it's a file named 264, its gotta be a h264 stream. Maybe a re-wrapper will work (and then a conversion)

Last, could you run Media Info on the 264 file (or better yet post one for me?) - I'd like to see one.

[Andrew Johnson]" I surmise this is because of the protection issues around the Apple codecs, or the streaming issue, or the bad coding of Cinec, but I’m about ready to hurl this godforsaken PC lemon into the street as I can’t get even one decent file from any of this mindless trial-and-error ludicrousness."

No protection around ProRes...but it's been shoehorned into FFMPEG - so who knows what's been done there. I don't know about the coding of Cinec.

Don't blame the PC - it's the stream your struggling with. Call the company and give them a piece of your mind!

Here’s an avi from AVI Generator of the same .264 which I converted from a .264 into a DNxHD 36 .mov in HD Video Converter here (see 6.49mins in) and I’ve uploaded the shortest .264 I can find in the whole cache for speed of use.

The Media Info of a typical example of one of these .264 files is as follows: